Re: Supporting NTFS in the kernel

[Justin Georgeson <jgeorgeson lopht net>]

Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> Am Mon, den 06.10.2003 schrieb Marc Schwartz um 18:27: 
>
> > On Mon, 2003-10-06 at 10:47, Samuel Flory wrote:
> >
> > > Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> > >
> > > > Dave Jones wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > > On Sun, Oct 05, 2003 at 02:55:21PM +0200, Jaap A. Haitsma wrote:
> > > > > > I would like it very much if the standard kernel would include the 
> > > > > read  > driver for NTFS
> > > > >
> > > > > Won't happen due to potential patent problems.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Would it be possible to add some parts of the linux-ntfs-ng driver (or 
> > > > maybe code hooks) so that they, or somebody else, could provide rpm 
> > > > packages for the new ntfs driver module? The linux-ntfs Project 
> > > > currently provides only rpms for the *old* ntfs driver (AFAICS)?
> > >
> > >
> > >    What sort of hooks are needed?  What is stopping someone from 
> > > compiling and distributing a module in an rpm?
> >
> >
> > Has anyone attempted the instructions at the bottom of:
> > http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/redhat.html
> >
> > "How was it done?"
> >
> > where there are some brief instructions and links for a script file and
> > a spec file to create the RPM.
> >
> > I have not yet had the time to work through it, but that seems like a
> > reasonable way to start.
>
>
> But this is for the old, not SMP aware, NTFS driver. For the new one a
> kernel recompile seems to be necessary AFAICS. Don't know if they need
> something special in the kernel or if they are to lazy to make a
> separate module compile possible on top of a kernel-source-tree as the
> one from redhat (with correct version/modversions/autoconf/...). Maybe
> someone with more know-how in the linux-kernel can answer...

I've been running an SMP box for several years, and have been running 
the old, not SMP aware, NTFS driver most of that time. I've never had a 
single problem with it.

Is the driver still included in the kernel-source RPMS? If so you don't 
need to download any extra packages.

make (x|menu)config
load appropraite config file (kernel-<ver>-i686-smp.config for me)
save config & exit
edit EXTAVERSION in /usr/src/linux-2.4/Makefile to match what's running
 - this is the one step that always gets me
make dep
make clean
make _mod_fs
 - this is the smallest target I could find to get the driver built
copy ntfs.o to /lib/modules/...
depmod -a
modprobe -a ntfs

The latest driver download touches kernel/ksyms.c so it can't be simply 
dropped in to compile just the module. The patch would have to be made 
part of the official kernel RPMs, but the module could still be left 
disabled, as it currently is, so my set of steps above would still work, 
I think.